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How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

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Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#381

Post by yters »

collyw wrote: post #278
ido wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there are many companies and roles which require you to show the actual number of users, or the load of the service that you worked on. I got my first job as a programmer in 2001 and not once was I asked that. I'm sure they exist but I wouldn't count on that being so common as to significantly impact the OP's career prospects. Two things I've most often noticed people care about when hiring: 1. experience with the ex…

That last sentence sums up the sad state of hiring in the industry well.

probably depends if you are applying to another faang or if you want to work on mission critical insurance technology

people who really need skills are probably good at indentifying said skills

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#382

Post by heavenlyblue »

6510 wrote: post #298
rocqua wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think a big worry for any C-levels is "what if my employees are wrong". And there is good reason to hedge against this, because insiders have clear interests in defending past mistakes. And if you hired your people yourself, you probably know you skipped over some qualified people who were to expensive, and weeded out some overconfident people who turned out not to be all that. In the end, you wonder what those exp…

When I was 17 I worked [production] in a sofa factory that made huge profit. They hired every highly specialized consultant available. I asked one of the consultants and some office folk for an explanation (I was paid 3 guilders or so per hours ($1.5)) To my surprise both the consultant and the office folk thought it was a fascinating question and explained elaborately how [to them] it was worth every penny to have w…

Which question?

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#383

Post by wsc981 »

x86_64Ubuntu wrote: post #128
hieunc229 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Business guys usually comes together and brag about their works. Quite often, they start to talk about things they heard but don’t understand much. And the other one hear about it, get excited, but also don’t understand much. Then on the meeting, he brought the idea up and convince everyone to do it. The next you know, you’re pulling your hair out trying to understand what is going on

I know a guy that works at a company where the CEO will sell something to customers not knowing anything about the technical details, and then come back to the business and "make them do it".

I previously worked for a Dutch fintech company that operated in the same way, but from my understanding they were (probably still are) really quite effective, profits hugely increasing year-on-year.

But this Dutch company also makes use of some kinds of SWAT dev teams that help customers on the spot with issues, making sure the product lives up to the clients’ expectations, even if this means modifying a product delivered by the core dev teams. I.e.: if some feature was promised, but not yet part of the current release, the SWAT team might hack something quickly, often on the spot in the clients offices. Later on, such a hack might be replaced with a proper solution.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#384

Post by close04 »

s3b wrote: post #371
hartator wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes that sounds unnecessary confusing.

Maybe the confusion is deliberate.

To the average person AI makes everything sound more modern, "smarter". So it gets sprinkled in everything. Things that have been using the same logical algorithm since the dawn of computing are now called AI. The worst is hearing people in the field calling every piece of automation and single purpose code that does one thing the same way every time as "AI".

Everyone does it just to attach their old or boring tech to the fancy new trend and have some "cool" rub off on them.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#385

Post by Apocryphon »

tome wrote: post #213
Apocryphon wrote: post #89

Don't want this to turn into a big politics tangent, but I've thought that one use case for a tech workers union is to be able to push back against questionable business decisions from management. I've seen places where engineers and other ICs, some team leads and managers, those with far more experience and clout at me, voice skepticism against questionable product decisions coming from upper management, only to rec…

> People imagine tech unions will just be a rehash of Industrial Era blue collar unions, but they have the potential to be something more- a way for the rank and file to finally have the clout to push back against bad engineering decisions from poor leadership. They probably ought to promote those organisations under a different name then.

That suggestion has already come up:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23497714

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#387

Post by weeboid »

worriedformyjob wrote: post #13

Obviously using a throwaway here. Our board members got it into their heads that successful companies must have an AI "play", so they instructed the CEO to invest about 10% of our development budget on AI. We are doing absolutely inane projects that have no hope of succeeding. We serve a niche industry where certified professionals have to do certain tasks personally, instead of being able to delegate to secretaries.…

Ahh, I see. You misunderstand your true customer. It is not the purchaser. It is the investor — PE. Or, "the market".

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#388

Post by NickM »

joelthelion wrote: post #294
TedShiller wrote: post #264

I'll share a disturbing anecdote about one of the largest and most influential software companies in the world, based in the Bay Area, and I'll leave it to you to guess which one. I know of several people who work there who are ranked very highly and are paid extremely well, who have told me personally that the work they do there is terrible for the users (i.e. it's exploitative) and terrible for the internet (it int…

At that level, I don't think we can expect individuals to make "the right decision" and take actions that hurt them personally. This is where government regulation is needed.

Yes, 100% agree. Unless we change the system to stop these abuses, then the good people who "do the right thing" and quit will simply be replaced by other new employees who don't give a shit. The end result is that bad people are rewarded with huge paychecks while good people are punished with fewer opportunities and/or lower paying jobs.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#389

Post by gwbas1c »

mnm1 wrote: post #132
gwbas1c wrote: post #117

IMO, that's the biggest sign that your job's not going to last very long. I remember partial involvement in a major feature that I thought was kind of lame; but it pulled in quite a few engineers and was a major deliverable. I thought to myself, "huh, I guess customers will actually pay for this?" Then later I found out that no one actually bought the feature.

This happens so much, I wonder what the effect would be if management actually got honest feedback and listened to it. I think often the engineers implementing things know if they will work or not but their opinions are ignored, if they are even brave enough to point out the things that won't work. It's the curse of the employee relationship. Employees don't want to stir things up, so they do what management wants, d…

It wasn't a situation like that, yet.

In this case, we (engineers) had a lot of trust with management because usually features were developed with lots of customer involvement. (And when features weren't, they were usually MVP-style to test-market something.)

So, in this case, I pointed out some limitations and immediately got back an answer that implied that the customer was aware of the limitations and was more concerned about something else.

That's why I was shocked to find out no one bought it!

Anyway, to further add insult to injury, the new feature added lots of complexity to the product; complexity that added development cost to further development.

Re: How many of you know that the team is working on something that no-one wants?

#390

Post by jtjbdhsjjdnd »

heavenlyblue wrote: post #379
alkonaut wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. Google Translate is obviously a useful product, and obviously Google will have thousands of areas where they can apply AI (enough that they'd even write frameworks for it). But 99(.99)% of us work in mundane jobs doing boring CRUD apps. My post was meant in this context. You work in a company making an intranet product for the paper tissue industry. Your manager wants v3.0 to have some AI in it. No one remembers…

Google Translate was good before the so-called "AI revolution".

As far as I remember it was close to unusable. Even most basic translation to languages besides German, Spanish and French was a nightmare. That was at lest true during my second year at the university (~2010-2011).
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